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  As they walked off, Puller said, “Know the man well?”

  “One of Drake’s leading citizens. And one of the wealthiest.”

  “Right. Number two guy. So in the same league with Trent?”

  “The Trents are in a league by themselves. Strauss is just one of his peons. But a very well-compensated peon. His house is smaller than Trent’s but gargantuan by Drake standards.”

  “Strauss from Drake?”

  “No, he moved here with his family over twenty years ago. He was from the East Coast, at least I think.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what brought him here?”

  “Work. He was a business guy and in the energy field. Drake may not look like much, but we do have energy in the form of coal and gas. He started working for Trent and the business really took off. Now what was that DD stuff you mentioned?”

  Puller said, “A BCD means Big Chicken Dinner. That stands for a bad conduct discharge. A DD is worse, a dishonorable discharge. Since Dickie’s still walking around free, I’m guessing it wasn’t a DD. They kicked him out for a reason that didn’t involve a court-martial. That’s what he meant when he said the Army didn’t much like him.”

  Cole gazed in the direction of the Strausses. “I never knew that.”

  “The only reason it might be relevant is that lots of BCDs are tied to drug use that the Army just doesn’t want to screw around with. So they choose kicking guys out instead of prosecuting them.”

  “And maybe that ties to the meth lab we found?”

  “You noticed it, right?” asked Puller.

  She nodded. “Dickie’s tat sleeve is identical to Eric Treadwell’s.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  PULLER SNAGGED THE LAPTOP and briefcase from the Drake Sheriff’s Office’s evidence room. He had to fill out the necessary paperwork to maintain proper chain of custody.

  As they walked out Cole yawned and stretched.

  He said, “You should head home and get some sack time. I promise not to call and wake you up.”

  She smiled. “I appreciate that.”

  “The tat sleeve? Is that a gang deal? Or do people around here just like that particular arm design?”

  “I suppose I’ve seen it on Dickie before but never really focused on it. I can ask around.”

  “Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You really going to be there at 0600?”

  “I’ll give you a break, I’ll make it 0630.”

  “Oh, I found a doc to do the posts.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Walter Kellerman. He’s first-rate. Even wrote a textbook on forensic pathology.”

  “When is he going to do the posts?”

  “Starting tomorrow afternoon. At his office in Drake around two. You want to be there?”

  “Yes.” He turned to head back to the motel.

  “Hey, Puller, why do I think you’re not really going to bed yet?”

  He glanced back. “You need me, you’ve got my number.”

  “So I can call and wake you up?”

  “Anytime.”

  Puller fast-walked back to Annie’s Motel. Cole had been spot-on. He wasn’t going to bed yet. He checked the little traps he always put in his room to make sure no one had been there. Annie’s Motel did not offer maid or room service. One had to police his own space and find his own grub, which suited Puller just fine. He found nothing amiss.

  He was on the road within five minutes, his destination the designated DHS drop site. He could kill two birds with one stone with this maneuver. He made a call and arranged for the agent stationed there to meet him. It took fifty minutes on the curvy roads. Normally the drop site was for evidence storage when a CID agent was in the field with no access to secure facilities. It took two agents to log in or log out any evidence, for obvious reasons.

  When he got to the site Puller and the agent on duty packaged the laptop and briefcase in special boxes to be sent to the Army’s criminal lab in Atlanta. Puller did not have the technical expertise to break the passcodes and access the laptop. And though he possessed both TS and SCI clearances, he probably didn’t have the specific authorizations to look at what might be on there anyway. Because the laptop and briefcase potentially contained national security information, a commercial shipper could not be used. A special military courier was being summoned to accompany the sealed boxes down on a morning flight out of Charleston, West Virginia. They would be in Atlanta later that day. Puller could have taken the stuff down to Georgia himself, which he’d actually done in the past, but he thought it was more important to remain at the scene.

  In the Army you always covered your ass. Thus he’d gotten approval for this plan from his SAC, who had covered his ass by getting necessary approvals all the way up to the one-star level. How the one-star covered her butt Puller didn’t know and didn’t really care.

  On his drive back to Drake, Puller phoned USACIL in Atlanta and spoke with a supervisor he knew there who was working late on a rush case. She was a DA civilian named Kristen Craig. They had worked on many cases together, though they’d only met a few times in person. He gave her a thumbnail of what was coming.

  “Kristen, I know you guys are cleared for most stuff. But you’ll need to be read into this by DIA. And the stuff has to go in your secret safe. I marked everything appropriately.”

  “Got it, Puller. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  The CIL had multiple branches depending on what evidence was being processed. Latent prints, firearms and tool marks, drug chemistry, DNA, serology, paint, cars, digital evidence and computers, and the list went on and on.

  “And, Kristen, it’s a complicated crime scene. I’ll be sending down a batch of different things across most branches. So be prepared. I’ll try to be as specific as I can on the accompanying docs, but I’ll probably need to clarify things by email or phone. And I think the Army is real anxious on this one.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t call on us for tech support. How many agents you have with you?”

  “It’s just me.”

  “You’re joking?”

  “Just me, Kristen.”

  He could hear her take a deep breath. “Hey, Puller?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What you just told me is starting to make sense based on what happened here today.”

  “What happened?”

  “We got a call from the Secretary of the Army’s office.”

  Puller kept one hand tightly on the wheel while the other pressed the phone to his ear. “SecArm?”

  “Yep. That’s not an everyday thing.”

  “I know. What did they want?”

  “To be kept in the loop on everything. And then we got another call.”

  “You’re a popular place. Who from?”

  “FBI. The Director’s office. Same thing. Be kept in the loop. Just thought you should know.”

  Puller mulled this. His SAC had said there were many eyes on this, and he hadn’t been exaggerating. Maybe the answer did lie with Colonel Reynolds and whatever he was doing at DIA. But then why was the FBI involved?

  “Thanks, Kristen.”

  “Hey, how’s your father?”

  “Hanging in there.”

  No one ever asked him about his brother.

  He closed the phone and drove on.

  He got back to the motel and carried his rucksack in with him. The trunk on his Malibu had a special alarm and a few surprises that were definitely not put there by the manufacturer. But Puller had also felt he was the best security for important items, and thus they always came in with him.

  He slept with one M11 under his pillow. The other one was perched in his right hand. The only deference to safety had been no round in the chamber. He would have to wake, rack the slide, acquire his target, and fire. And not miss. He would do all of that in three seconds and trust that it would be fast enough.

  He needed to go to sleep. And in ten seconds, just as the Army had taught hi
m, he did.

  CHAPTER

  22

  IT IS THE FIRE he remembers, really. Always that. In some ways maybe only that. Rubber, metal, and human flesh ablaze all together give off a smell like no other. It is a scent that is burned right into your DNA. It becomes a part of you forever. It is a part of him forever.

  His right forearm shattered, he fires with the left, the butt of his assault rifle wedged into his armpit. Left-hand trigger pull for a righty would normally be problematic, but he’s trained for this very moment. Sweat, blood, and guts for this very second. He’s become ambidextrous, can fight off both sides with nearly equal skill.

  Diesel fuel soaks his combat uniform. His combat assault helmet is gone, blown off by the blast’s concussive force. The strap burned his chin on the way out of the Humvee. He tastes salty blood.

  His and others’.

  There are scraps of human tissue on his face.

  His and others’.

  The sun is so hot that it seems possible it could alone ignite the fuel, burn him to cinders. He is perhaps a few degrees away from being a walking conflagration.

  He assesses the situation. Up, down, out, in. All relevant compass points. Doesn’t look good. Actually, it never looks good. Two heavy-as-hell Humvees blown onto their sides like downed rhinos. Despite the underside armor four of his men are dead or mortally wounded. He’s the only one mobile. There’s no good reason why this is the case. It’s luck, nothing more. None of the dead and dying men had done anything wrong. He had done nothing particularly right.

  The IED had packed some serious punch. The terrorists were getting better. Americans armor up, so the turbaned bombers make a bigger boom to compensate.

  He sprays the area with his assault weapon, empties two mags, drops it, shakes free his pistol, and fires off the extended mag on that. He’s not really looking to kill the enemy with the barrage, only to get their attention. To let them know he’s still around. To let them know that they can’t come and just take him and his men. That it won’t be easy. Or smart to try.

  The next weapon he pulls from the wrecked Humvee is his favorite. The Army bolt-action sniper rifle. This time he will fire with more deliberation, with far more care. He uses the metal skeleton of the Humvee as his support. He wants them to know he is serious.

  He fires off one round merely to warm his rifle barrel. No matter how good a shot you were, a bullet traveling down a cold barrel often misses its target. Snipers normally had spotters, but he doesn’t have that luxury right now. Thus he counts his mil dots, gauges angles, distance, ordnance drop, ambient temp, and wind among other factors and dials in the necessary adjustments on his scope. He does this automatically, without really thinking, like a computer executing a tried-and-true algorithm. The longer the shot, the greater small mistakes in calculations add up. An inch off here or there meant you missed your target by yards over a great distance. He is chasing breathing figures performing horizontal sprints across the street. These men are all lean and can run all day. Not an ounce of Western fat on them. They are brutal, hardened; mercy is not in their lexicon.

  Yet he is also brutal, hardened, and mercy has been absent from his vocabulary since the day he put on the uniform. The rules of engagement are clear and have been ever since men first took up arms against each other.

  He relaxes his breathing and then lets out a long exhale, reaching his cold zero point of physiological perfection for a sniper. Between heartbeats to minimize barrel motion, he executes a long, sure, and unhurried trigger pull using the ball of his finger to avoid a sideways pull on the weapon. The shot impacts its targets and spins the Taliban runner like a ballerina. He hits the Afghan soil at the mid-street point. He lies still for all time, his brain disintegrated by Corporal John Puller Jr.’s heavy round.

  He exercises the bolt on his weapon and slides home another 7.62 shell.

  A split second later comes another run by an even taller, leaner Taliban.

  Puller performs his kill algorithm at lightning speed, his synapses traveling far faster than even the bullet he’s about to deliver. Another trigger pull and then there occurs a second spin of Afghani flesh and bone with essential brain parts missing. The target twirls with grace, with utter finality. There are no second acts on the desert stage. This Taliban, like the first, doesn’t even realize he’s dead, because the brain is slow on the uptake in such situations. The howls of his comrades rip the air. Racks on weapons pull back.

  They are pissed.

  His preliminary mission is accomplished. Upset people never fight well.

  Yet there will be some caution, for they know he is a force to be reckoned with. He looks at his men. He triages from a distance as blood pours out of his own body from multiple points. Three of his guys are dead, already burned nearly beyond recognition because the fuel and ammo loads have blown up in their laps. No chance for any of them. One man has been thrown clear of the fire but is dying nonetheless. A chunk of his chest and right leg are missing and as Puller watches something bursts inside the wounded man and superoxygenated arterial blood sprays over him like a horrific fountain of red. He’ll be dead in seconds. Yet there are four injured men he can still save. Or die trying.

  Shots come his way. The Taliban aren’t running anymore. They take cover, raise their weapons—often their American-made weapons, from the Russian invasion decades ago—and do their best to end Puller’s life.

  They are determined.

  So is he.

  They have fellow warriors they are fighting for.

  So does he.

  There are many more of them. He has called in for backup. It will take longer to get here than he probably has to live. To get out of this he will have to kill them all.

  John Puller is prepared to do just that. In fact, he expects to do just that.

  All extraneous thought is banished. He focuses. He doesn’t think. He simply employs his training. He will fight until his heart stops.

  Total focus. This is it. All those years of sweat, of agony, of having someone screaming that you can’t do something but actually expecting that you will do it better than anyone ever has. All for the next three minutes. Because that’s probably how long it will take to declare a winner in this one encounter between desperate men. If you multiply all these individual fights to the death by a factor of a million it will add up to something called a war.

  He lets their gunfire pass. The rounds ping off American Humvee armor. Others rip past his head sounding like miniature jet fighters. One grazes his left arm, a totally unremarkable wound among all the others. He will find out later that another rifle round whipsawed off the armor plates on his flak jacket, ricocheted off the toppled Humvee, reversed course, and found purchase in his neck after losing most of its juice. To the docs it will look like a big metal zit, right underneath the surface of his skin. Right now, he doesn’t even notice. Doesn’t care.

  And then John Puller raises his weapon once more…

  CHAPTER

  23

  AS ALWAYS, Puller didn’t jerk awake. He simply eased off his thin mattress at Annie’s Motel. He was in control, his movements measured, steady. He was not on the outskirts of Kandahar fighting turbaned killers. He was in American coal mining country looking for perhaps homegrown killers.

  He didn’t have to check his watch. His internal clock told him what he needed to know: 0430. He showered and took an extra thirty seconds under the hot water to lift the stench of a years-old memory. But it didn’t work. It never did. He was just going through the motions. He dressed in what had quickly become his uniform here: jeans and CID polo shirt, but he substituted an old pair of his beige Army jump boots for the sneakers. It was already hot outside. It likely never grew cool overnight. But no matter how hot it ever became, nothing could come close to Afghanistan or Iraq in summer. That was a heat that was impossible to forget. Especially when it was fueled by diesel fire. By the screams of men burning to death. Turning black and raw and then disintegrating right